A Farscape Movie Is Being Written

Showrunner Rockne S. O’Bannon has been busy with shows like Revolution, Cult, and Defiance in recent years, but it would appear that his heart has never left what many fans would consider his best work: Farscape. While the show has been off the air for more than a decade now, die hards have never lost hope that there would eventually be more projects made within the sci-fi universe - and today there's news that suggesting that a movie could potentially be in the works.

Comic Book Resources picked up a tidbit from Bannon at a showrunners panel at WonderCon this weekend, and confirmed that he is in the process of working on a script for a Farscape feature. "We are, in fact, in the script stage of a Farscape feature," Bannon said. While your first instinct may be to get super excited that a Farscape movie is coming out soon, the writer/producer was quick to point out that the idea is still in extremely early development.

Begining in 1999 and running until 2003, the show starred Ben Browder as John Crichton, an astronaut who gets thrown across the universe via a wormhole while on an experimental space mission. He gets thrown into the middle of an intergalactic conflict involving the Peacekeepers, a military organization, who begin hunting him down as a fugitive after an accident results in the death of the Peacekeeper captain's brother. He winds up getting pulled into a large living spaceship named Moya, and inside he meets a group of aliens named Zhaan (Virginia Hey), D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) and Rygel (Jonathan Hardy). Each of them simply wants to find their way to their respective homes, and over the course of four seasons get pulled into a number of wild adventures. The show was abruptly cancelled in 2002 right before the fourth season was about to air on Sci-Fi (now SyFy), but the end of the show had a big cliffhanger. Thanks to a fan campaign, a three-hour mini-series called Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was eventually financed in 2004, giving the fans some closure.

To get a sense of the show, you can watch the season one intro below:

Obviously the fact that they are writing a script doesn't mean that the project will ever find financing (maybe turn to Kickstarter a la Veronica Mars?), but would you fans be interested in seeing a Farscape movie? Would you want it to be a continuation of the show, or more of a feature adaptation? Let us know what you're thinking in the comments section below!

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.